Studio Profile
We visit UK studio Playground Games, the Horizon developer preparing for life beyond Forza
From its drystone walls to its streaked autumn skies, Forza Horizon 4 is Playground’s most British project, and a timely assertion of cultural identity as the studio becomes part of the Microsoft empire. Playground has always had a special relationship with Microsoft, of course, having worked on Forza with franchise creator Turn 10 since its founding in 2010. But it wasn’t till the unexpectedly wild success of Forza Horizon 3 that the idea of an acquisition solidified.
“There were conversations that we’d had from time to time, as kind of inevitably you do when you’re in a long-term partnership like that, about taking the next step in our relationship,” chief creative officer Ralph Fulton tells us during a visit to the studio’s elegant white-plastered offices in Leamington Spa. “I tend to resort to romantic allusions when talking about this stuff. I think after Horizon 3 those conversations became more serious.” Playground’s owners raised the idea of an acquisition initially with Turn 10’s studio head Alan Hartman, but the conversation soon expanded to Xbox boss Phil Spencer and head of Microsoft Studios Matt Booty. “It just made common sense,” studio director Gavin Raeburn says. “It was like, ‘Why hasn’t this happened earlier?’”
Additional resources aside, one incentive for Playground was simply ease of access. As perhaps Microsoft’s most trusted thirdparty, it had more insight into the publisher’s operations than most – the studio was brought in relatively early on plans for Xbox One X, for instance – but there were still frustrating hurdles. “We could talk to other studios, but it had to be filtered, you had to go through certain channels,” Raeburn says. “If we wanted to find out about new technology or initiatives that were coming through, there was a time and place for that to happen, and it was usually just behind the curve. Now that we’re a firstparty studio, I can pick up the phone and dial out to 343 Studios, The Coalition, Ninja Theory – we can start talking about technology, tools, all of those conversations are easy to have. And hopefully, we can get involved with future planning for consoles and other initiatives.” Fulton hints that “even though not a great deal of time has passed since the acquisition – just before E3, end of May – there are already things we’ve had disclosed to us that we didn’t know.”
The elephant in the room here is Playground’s mysterious non-racing open-world project, rumoured to be a new instalment in Lionhead’s troubled Fable series. The latter’s existence “definitely influenced our decision, and Xbox’s decision, to take this step together,” Fulton comments, adding that “it wouldn’t take a genius to work out that they were both with Xbox. The amount of content we’re going to be bringing to the family was a crucial factor, there.” Ideas for the game began to circulate in 2016, as Playground completed development of Forza
Horizon 3. While not in itself designed to woo Microsoft, it certainly helped make the case that Playground was a good long-term investment. “We felt we’d achieved success in racing, and wanted to continue that – we love the genre,” Raeburn tells us. “But we felt that if we wanted to really make a milestone for the studio, we should look for success in a different genre as well. Again it made sense to partner with Microsoft, and they were really supportive.”
The team in
question currently shares office space with the Horizon staff – “they’re tantalisingly close to you right now”, Fulton teases – but will move to its own premises a little way up the road next January. With Microsoft’s backing, Playground has embarked on a hiring spree: it plans to add around 150 people to the new team, in addition to recruiting for future work on Forza. The two teams will maintain a close rapport. “It’s incredibly important to us that they don’t become siloed off from each other,” Fulton says. “I joke about it being five minutes walk [between premises], but that is a significant distance in how it affects working relationships and knowledge sharing. We’re going to work really hard to make sure there are still really strong ties between those two teams right across each team, to make sure we are sharing best practices, offering guidance and advice wherever either team can. Because our strength comes from that communication and it will make both teams better. I do think it’s a very good thing that, for the first year or so of that team’s life, they’ve been here. They’ve spent time bonding within the overall culture of Playground.”
This emphasis on communication naturally draws upon Playground’s experiences collaborating with Turn 10, a studio half a world away. Four Horizon games in, the two studios are very much in sync, and if Playground has more of a say these days over Forza’s overall direction, the acquisition hasn’t created any real upheavals. “People look at it as the point where a lot of things would change,” Fulton says. “It was the intention on both sides that that wouldn’t be the case, because a lot of the decision-making was predicated on the fact that we’re pretty good at what we do, and it would be nuts to change that.”
The studios continue to share resources and features between projects, from car handling data to the Drivatars, Forza Motorsport 5’ s player-generated AI personalities. “We have access to their code base, so sharing is quite easy,” Raeburn says. “But we do it in a methodical way in that when we’ve finished an item of code or work we think would be useful to them, we’ll highlight it. They have access to our plans, too, so they know what’s up and coming, and our tech leads meet on a
“IT’S INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT TO US THAT THE TWO TEAMS DON’T BECOME SILOED OFF FROM EACH OTHER”